The Monster Within
by doxthextimexwarp
Summary: Lauren's at the Rock as she reflects on who she has become. TWO-SHOT. / Please read. I promise it's worth your time. I know she's not your favorite character. But maybe you just haven't seen what Lauren could really be...
1. Part One

_Since I was having trouble with everyone being able to read this the first time that I put this up, I took it down. Since I had a few more days with it, I have touched it up and added a few more details to it. Please Review. Thanks for reading._

_I hope this will, at the minimal, inspire you to take a deeper look as to who Lauren Tanner is._

**The Monster Within.**

I said something horrible. Again.

It makes me hate myself. Again.

Underneath my caucasian skin, I feel my stomach turning in that way that it does when I know that I have hurt someone on purpose. It begins by turning in the opposite direction and then it compounds itself. Then it somehow will curl and then spin slowly around. A ferris circle. Except this time it isn't for pleasure.

I keep my smile plastered on my face like Barbie. Because that's who you think I am. Because you don't see me any other way.

Sometimes I find myself wondering just how exactly I became just like this plastic goddess. Was it because I said something? Because I somehow look a certain way? Was it because you thought I should be her, and therefore, have become?

It's these questions that bring me to the root of who I am:

Did I create this monster? Or did someone do it for me?

I purse my lips and hold them tight. The smile is now gone from my face as you walk away and head to over to Sasha, who always gives you praise. Who always greets you warmly. Who always manages to find something great in you, even when you haven't.

Not me.

I wish so badly that I was you. I wish that I was my best friend. Ex-best friend, I mean.

I turn away and head over to the beam. My home. That familiar feeling of four-inches and loss of gravity has my heart calmed. Lately, though, that feeling hasn't been as strong. Maybe it's because I've lost my footing in a sense. Meaning that I haven't been winning the gold for beam as often since you've become champion. I've lost my confidence in where I stand. I've lost who I was at the Rock.

Another thought comes to mind and I wonder how I had come to associate home with the beam. Was it because I had always won? Was it simply home because I knew I was good at it and it was clearly my domination?

I know how messed up that is. Home shouldn't be where there are gold medals aligning the walls and where champions lay. It's where the heart is.

So was my heart just dead-set on winning?

Maybe. But ever since losing my best friends, since knowing that for sure my mother will never want anything to do with me, since knowing that I will never have a loving non-druggie mother in her place, I've found that my heart is dead-set on another thing.

Not being a loser.

Losers end up with no one but their ex-best friends' boyfriends because they're easy. I loved Carter so much, I loved him ever since I was young when I first saw him at the Rock. It was an obsession of a teen girl who worshipped her idol. And when I had finally gotten him, I gave what I knew I could only give away once: my virginity.

My v-card now swiped, I needed to have him. I needed to prove to those around me that virginity and love and romance and all good things that make up the world are true. That the girl can end up with the guy in the end and they can love each other.

I wasn't going to be like my mom and dad.

I wasn't going to be like the sluts who my dad dated after.

I was going to hold on to my true love who had taken my purity away.

And now I'm with Carter and I know he doesn't love me. But I don't care because the need to prove is greater than the hurt I feel knowing this. I have to prove that romance through sexual union is lasting and real. In essence, it will prove that all of the sex my dad has had hasn't broken the spell of true love.

Or, at least, I can prove that firsts can last and never become part of the past in faded memories. I don't want to let my love once again fade away into static and then shut off completely.

I hold on to you just because I have to prove that I can make relationships work. That maybe if I hold on enough, I can make you love the woman I am.

You let me do it because you're a teenage boy who likes to fuck a Barbie.

I take a moment to realize that nobody has bothered to notice that I am just standing at the beam. No one has come up to ask me if I'm ready. No one has come up to ask me if I want a spotter. No trainer has come up to command me to learn a new trick.

I've done this to myself. I know that. I'm the one who has driven you all away.

And these are just the consequences.

But I wish so badly that people could see past the surface and the walls I have set up. That they could see past this monster exterior and see that maybe I have a heart.

But then I'm reminded that it's obvious that I don't. Because if I did I obviously wouldn't be doing and saying the things that I do and say.

I wish you could see that I really do care. That every time I do or say something that is just extremely horrible and repulsive, I hate myself a little bit more. That I punish myself just as you punish me with your cold glances and stony exterior. Your hate towards me is clear.

I wish you could see how much I hate myself too.

When I met with a therapist once, he told me this, "Be the person that you yourself would want to be friends with. And if you can say that you would like to be friends with, ya know, yourself, then you must be a good person."

I could never be friends with myself.

You couldn't bare to be friends with me any longer. You couldn't forgive. You couldn't ask me why. You never bothered to wonder if maybe there was something wrong. If maybe I needed someone to talk to. Maybe I just needed someone to listen.

Hell, I couldn't even stick it out with being friends with me even if we were family. My own father can't dare to be with me. Late nights working at the winery. Late nights with his sluts and whores. Late nights with the business partners also known as his bar chums.

He sits and laughs and has fun with his comrades.

I sit and laugh and have fun in a darkened bedroom sitting near my vanity with the faint light of the streetlight flooding into my room as it looks upon a paper-ruled stomach where my secrets still stay hidden.

I just needed someone. I just wanted someone to care. Someone to listen. Someone to want to listen and care.

But all I end up with when the day is done is myself in a cold bed with tears down my cheeks and ears flooded with sexual moans of love that was all a façade from late-night drinks that seep into my room from the master that is just down the hall.

I hate my taunts, my bickering, the rude words I say.

I hate my schemes and my lies and the cursing.

And then I come to the pivotal question that we all silently dare to ask, "Lauren, why do you do it? Why don't you change?"

Because I'm a loser. And secretly, if you hate more, and then I hate myself even more, it will be easier to leave.

To go. To vanish. To disappear.

When I lay awake at night and dreams have yet to come, I ponder what would happen if I died. Would you be happy? Would you dance upon my grave in sweet joy?

If you did, I wouldn't blame you. I just hope that you would dance hard enough that your stomping would somehow hurt me in a physical and emotional way that I could feel your hatred. So that I can ingrain it against my skin and my heart forever.

I think about how I would do it. Would Barbie look beautiful at her grave even if her head was blown to pieces and she was bloody and scarred all over? Would Barbie still be beautiful if she was black and blue? Would Barbie still be beautiful if she had red lines across her skin like lines on loose leaf paper?

Tell me your words of hate against me and I'll write them across my skin in neat and pretty letters. Tell me what you hate about me and I'll scar it on me forever.

I lay a hand against my stomach and I feel my stomach turning.

I lay my other hand against my stomach and, from memory, my palm is laying right across the deepest line I've ever drawn.

I shake it off and look up.

No one is here to question. No one here to wonder. No one here to ask.

When there's no one here, I'm left all by myself to ask these questions:

Did I create the monster I am?

Or did you?


	2. Part Two

_"If you look in the mirror and don't like what you see, then you'll find out first hand what it's like to be me."-My Chemical Romance_

_Originally, this was just a ONE-SHOT. However, with the past events that have happened to Lauren Tanner, I felt the need to continue, because I think that these feelings don't just go away. If anything they have no become magnified. I hope you give her a chance. _

_Please Read and Review. As always, you're support is greatly appreciated because it is always my inspiration._

**The Monster Within, Part Two**

I look into the mirror and all I see is a body filled with nothing.

Is that even possible?

Furthermore, is that even right?

I feel nothing. I do nothing. I am nothing.

Nothing.

It's not as if it could be a positive "anything" or even a neutral "something." It's a negative, a void, a dark abyss where the only findings are of dark shadows haunting of memories, emotions once had, of dreams once believed.

My mother is dead. There's no reason to mourn her. She was just 0.5 of the equation to create me. And do I thank her for this?

No.

Because even though we are told to respect life. Cemented into us, we are told to worship it and behold it.

But I really don't give a shit.

Life is nothing but a cruel game where I'm a pawn in some body's hand that they are just waiting to sacrifice to let someone else achieve WINNER. Winner…How easily I'm reminded of just how awful I am. Because really, if you're not the Winner, then you're just the opposite of that: Failure.

Sometimes I wonder the unthinkable: Of all the mean things I say, all anyone ever says is that they wish I would receive a harsh dose of reality. I should receive payback. Justice.

You don't get that you're already serving it up to me on a silver platter next to the glass of cyanide and the burnt toast.

Revenge against me doesn't just come in the words you say ("Bitch"), or the things you do (Walk Away). It's the way you are.

It's the way you stand on your toes at attention waiting for your blessings and compliments. It's the way you always manage to sweet talk everyone around you into loving you. It's not like you even need to talk them into it; they willingly do it. For some reason, whatever higher power there is, they gave you this gift that you don't even recognize: people just naturally and magnetically love you. It's simply right and good.

I'm not right or good.

You're just an instant and constant reminder that I'll never be what people wish me to be; what people want me to be. I'll never be perfect. I'll never be the perfect girl who is always kind, nice, pretty, pure, and wanted. I'll never be the girl who all the parents wish they had to call their own who always did as they were told and always were respectable among society's standards. I'll never be the pride of a coach or a parent as I win gold. 'll never be the girl who has a friend to be with on a weekend night to watch movies with in front of the TV. I'll never be the girl that you wish I could be because lets face it.

You'd never give me a chance.

My mother never gave me that second chance. She never came to Nationals. I wanted to show her that I could be someone worth wanting to visit. I could be someone worth her time and effort after all these years. I could be someone worth her love, regardless of how many times she had made me question my own towards her. But she never came. She was never there to cheer me on like mothers of Payson, Kaylie, and Emily. I had only one lone figure standing in the bleachers with a look of contempt as he held a black cell phone against his ear, yelling not at me to succeed, but for someone on the other end to not fuck up.

Maybe, all those years, it was me he was trying to tell his screams too.

It was me he didn't want to end up being fucked up.

Too late.

The voice that whispers to me late at night, my conscience, keeps me up with its tormenting and questioning. How do I shush myself when I am already still and quiet late at night?

I don't even have sex to fill the void.

It's a recovery, really, hidden among the words of slut and whore. You hate me because of what I do, and I do it because I want to feel just for one moment a release that doesn't involve pretty red lines across my stomach dancing across my caucasian skin. And as soon as that moment of heightened sex finishes, I'm left to return to my usual releases.

And now this time, I have your words.

I'm thankful, really, to receive them. I like writing different words rather than the same one over and over. Because in a sick way, I'm a thesaurus for all things related to Lauren:

Barbie. Plastic. Twisted. Evil. Bitch. Fat. Ugly. Disgusting. Imperfect. Impure. Undesired. Hated. Last. Lazy. Dumb. Unintelligent. Disfigured. Pathetic.

Monster.

That last one is my favorite. It says everything; it encompasses everything. All that I was. All that I am. All that I will forever be.

This word is my most prized possession. The word that I master and keep immortally locked within myself. It's my mind, my inner being. The who in Who I Am.

I am a Monster.

The mirror shows the replication of who I am. There are no tears that stream down my plastic face. There are no cries that leave my Barbie mouth. I turn away because two of me, even though its just a reflection, makes everything so much worse.

So fatally worse.

The monster is alone once more.

And all alone it hears only the voices that whisper hauntingly.

Who made you, dear Monster?

Who made you?

**END.**

_Please Review. All thoughts/criticisms are greatly desires and loved. _


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